The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  “Oh, God,” Rollins said.

  “It’s your friend Jerry Sloane,” Schecter said.

  “It is?” Marj looked again.

  “And you see who that woman is, don’t you?”

  Rollins had. “Elizabeth Payzen again.”

  “You’re joking,” Marj said.

  Rollins brought his hands over his face, cupping his palms over his eye sockets. He needed to close the world out for a minute, to think.

  “So she had something going with Jerry?” he heard Marj ask.

  “For a couple seconds anyway.”

  “And his father knew these people?”

  Rollins finally removed his hands. “I guess he must have.” The world looked soft and blurry now.

  “I thought he was, like, classy.”

  His laundered shirts in a box as if they were brand new, all his shoes shined every Monday, whether he’d worn them or not.

  “So did I.”

  “Chief knew all about Jerry,” Schecter said. “He used to deal a little drugs, but mostly he was a good-time guy who showed up wherever the action was.”

  “Did your friend ever do anything about these?” Rollins tapped the photographs. He felt like he was suffocating. “The police chief, I mean.”

  “Nope. He didn’t go after any of ’em. He didn’t really care, so long as it stopped. He pegged Jerry as the organizer, and he put in a call to him reminding him of his drug record. That was the end of it. The party went elsewhere. Chief put all this shit in the file and moved on to other things.

  Their dinners came, and not a moment too soon. Schecter pushed the photographs aside and plunged right into his veal, but Rollins just stared at his fish. The head was still on it, the eyes like glass beads, wide open even in death. What had those eyes seen? He pushed the plate away. “How about Cornelia? You ask him about her?”

  “The name rang no bells. Course, the chief doesn’t get out much.”

  Marj told Schecter about finding Cornelia’s photograph in the Globe’s file on the house.

  “Can’t figure that,” Schecter said. “Unless she’d showed up here herself at some point. Chief said this shit had been going on for years. Maybe somebody ran to the Globe to try to shut it down. That’s all I can think.”

  “She’s not in any of these pictures, is she?” Marj asked.

  “These were just taken last year.”

  Rollins looked over at him. “So?”

  Schecter stared right back. “Rollins, I keep telling you. The woman is dead.”

  Rollins reached across the table for the pile of photographs anyway. It was painful to see them all—all the bodies, all the anonymous sex, and his father on the big chair in the corner. He scrutinized the women’s faces. None belonged to Cornelia. He passed the photographs back, glad to be free of them, but sorry, too. He didn’t want to find her to be in with such a sleazy crowd. But he didn’t want her dead, either. He wished he had other choices.

  “You ever find out who owned the house?” Marj asked.

  Schecter took another bite of veal. “Some people named Glieberman. California types, apparently. Free-living.” He turned to Rollins. “That’s her on your father’s lap, by the way. The third Mrs. Glieberman. Chief recognized her. Formerly Mrs. Reid.”

  “The previous owner?” Rollins asked.

  “You heard of her?”

  “Neighbor told us.” He remembered Mrs. Beuley’s account.

  “I guess she came with the house.” Schecter laughed. “She does some business with the town, I forget just what. They finally bugged out a few weeks ago. I guess they had their old friend Jerry handle the sale.”

  “Elizabeth’s the one that puzzles me,” Marj said. “What was she doing there?”

  Schecter sliced up the last of his veal. “Maybe she got into Jerry. Maybe she’s trying to lose herself in the fuckfest. Maybe she’s there for the drugs. It could go a lotta different ways.”

  Rollins straightened up in his seat. “One of Cornelia’s neighbors told me that Elizabeth had gone out the night that Cornelia disappeared and come back very late, around three. Did you know that? She made it sound very suspicious.”

  “I never did get a really good explanation of where she was that night,” the detective admitted.

  “That doesn’t bother you?” Marj asked.

  “Only a little. People’s lives are messy. Look at yours—hanging out with this guy.” Schecter took another bite. “A lot of people wondered about Payzen. But I know the cops talked to her at least once.”

  “The neighbor said they never did,” Rollins said.

  “Neighbors never know anything. Which one was it? That tight-ass, the stay-at-home?”

  “Nicky Barton.”

  “Right. Nicky Barton.” He grinned again. “Personally, I think she had something against dykes.” He took another gulp of beer. “There may have been some history between the two of them. Neighbors can be like that. Real bitchy. But I checked Lizzie out. There were some problems there. She said she wasn’t in Londonderry that night, but she wouldn’t tell me where she was. But still, I had trouble picturing her as a murderer. I mean, where was the heat?” He wiped his fingers and picked out the photograph of her from the manila envelope again. “Okay, check this out. You see a couple of animals coming at the photographer, but Payzen’s pulling back, all wimpy like. That’s not the face of a killer.”

  “Maybe that’s what Wayne Jeffries is for,” Rollins said. “Or Jerry Sloane.”

  “Or your father,” Marj said.

  “Now cut that out!”

  That brought silence to the table. For the first time, Rollins was conscious of the noise all around them—the clattering of knives and forks, the chatter of conversations. It was like the roar of a vast ocean.

  Schecter broke the tension. “Why hire anyone to kill her? Why go to all that effort?”

  “And why would these people zero in on you later?” Marj added, with a look toward Rollins. “It’s not like you saw anyone do it, right?”

  “Me?” Rollins touched his chest. “No. God.”

  “You have to keep asking him these things,” Marj told Schecter. “You know how he is. He won’t say anything otherwise.”

  “I’ve noticed that, yeah.” Schecter’s head bobbed in laughter, then he popped a last slice of veal into his mouth.

  “So what do you think happened to Cornelia?” Marj asked him.

  Schecter set down his knife and fork. “I spent a solid year on that case, and I’ve thought about it a lot since.”

  “And?”

  “And frankly? I don’t have a clue.”

  After dinner, Rollins offered to put Schecter up in their spare room at the Ritz. “What, and listen to you two humping all night?” Schecter said. “No thanks.” He’d already made arrangements with an old friend in Belmont. He’d do what he could to track down the Gliebermans, to see what light they could shed on the connection between Sloane and Lizzie Payzen, and he’d keep after his California connection about the fax line. “Now, you sure you don’t want me to put the squeeze on this Tina Mancuso for you?” he asked Rollins as he was leaving. They’d discussed her a little over dessert. “Ask her what she’s trying to pull?”

  “Leave her alone,” Rollins told him. “She’s minor.”

  As a precaution, Rollins had the restaurant call a cab so they wouldn’t have to wander out into the night on their own. But after Schecter had driven off, and they were in the cab by themselves, Marj told him he should reconsider Schecter’s offer.

  Rollins shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t go well for Heather, okay?” Rollins finally said.

  “Okay,” Marj said quietly. “I can see that.” She nodded slowly, taking this in. “You might have said something to Al. But yeah, I can see that.”

  He rode along in silence. “My aunt and uncle might help us more.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They made their own deal with Jerry, don’
t forget. And they must know about the money.” Seeing a pay phone along the Common, he had the cabbie pull over.

  “You’re going to call them now?” Marj asked.

  Rollins checked his watch. “It’s only a little past ten.” He climbed out. Dark leaves rustled in the slight breeze, some kids were gathered around a pounding boom box, and a few pedestrians hurried along the lit pathways that crisscrossed the park. He grasped the phone and pressed 411 for information in Weston. When the operator came on, she had to ask him which number he wanted for Dr. and Mrs. Blanchard. (Only Rollins’ uncle would make such a big deal of a Ph.D.) “There’s one for The Barn, another for The Pond, and Main House.” Rollins settled on the last and pressed in the numbers. A cultivated voice answered on the fourth ring.

  “Aunt Eleanor?” Rollins asked. “It’s Rollins.” He waited a moment. “Your nephew.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Rollins. I’m sorry. I keep thinking of you as Edward.”

  They discussed the health of Rollins’ mother and the whereabouts of his brother for a few minutes before Rollins was able to get to the point. “I was hoping to come see you,” he said. “Something has come up.”

  “Oh?” Her voice seemed to catch. “You haven’t heard anything—?”

  “No, no. Nothing about Cornelia. Not directly, anyway. It’s just that I’ve learned a few things about the case that I’d rather not discuss on the phone.”

  “Well, George is down in Pennsylvania.”

  “Actually, I was hoping to see you.” Rollins had never gotten along very well with his blustery Uncle George. Aunt Ellie could be stiff, but at least she listened.

  “I’m not doing too much tomorrow.”

  “How about now?”

  She hesitated a moment. “It’s awfully late.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  The Blanchard place was a solid colonial, set well back from the road, with a fenced-in paddock and a big barn beside it. The light was on under the side portico, and, when Rollins pressed the buzzer, what sounded like a small pack of dogs came scampering to the door. After a few moments, a weary voice cried out “Coming, coming, coming.” And then the door opened to reveal Rollins’ Aunt Eleanor in a monogrammed bathrobe, her white hair down to her shoulders, restraining three or four collies with her hands. She looked older than Rollins had remembered, thinner, with dark bags under her eyes, but it had been years since he’d last seen her.

  She seemed a little startled to see Marj there, and she brought a hand up to her robe. “I wasn’t expecting you’d bring anyone.”

  Rollins introduced them. “This is my friend Marj,” Rollins said.

  Eleanor showed a half-smile. “Oh? Well, your mother will be pleased. Come on in.” With a shout, Eleanor ordered the dogs to back off while she opened the door to let Rollins and Marj pass into the spacious kitchen with sparkling marble countertops and brilliant tiles, and every cabinet brimming with crystal and flatware. “We’ll go into the dining room.”

  Rollins passed through the swinging kitchen door to a high-ceilinged, dark-paneled room where a silver tea tray had been set out on the mahogany table, and a few Pepperidge Farm cookies were arranged artfully on a Chinese plate beside it. “I asked Ginger to put out a little something for us,” Eleanor said.

  “Very kind of you.” Rollins took a seat on one of the heavy, Sheraton chairs, and Marj pulled out another one beside him.

  Eleanor sat at the head, then leaned forward to Rollins and clutched his arm with a bony hand. “Please. I have to know. I’m sitting down now. Have they found her?”

  “No. It’s nothing like that. I’m sorry. I thought I’d explained.”

  Eleanor slumped back into her chair. “Oh, God. You did. But I couldn’t think why else you’d come.” She balled up her linen napkin and looked away for a moment. Then she looked across to Marj. “It’s such a terrible situation.” Eleanor blew her nose into the napkin, then steadied herself and poured out some tea for the two of them into beautiful Wedgewood cups. “Go on,” she urged Rollins and Marj. “It’s herbal. It won’t keep you up.”

  Rollins set his cup down in front of him. “Look, Aunt Ellie, I went to see Cornelia’s old house.” He looked at her carefully. “It’s been sold.”

  She dropped a lump of sugar into her tea and swirled it around with a silver spoon.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Why should I? Your uncle George and I put it up for sale ourselves.”

  “But you didn’t own it.”

  Eleanor set her spoon down in her saucer with a clink. “Of course we did. It just wasn’t something we wanted everyone to know.”

  “When I was doing—that story, I spoke to a private investigator on the case, who told me that the deed was in her name.”

  “So?”

  “So you couldn’t have sold the house. It wasn’t yours.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” The words bore the sound of something breaking. “Of course it was ours. Look at the deed, you’ll see that George signed it over to the new people. I was there at the closing. I saw the whole thing.”

  “The Stantons, you mean?”

  “Yes. That’s it. Quite good people, I thought. We were so happy that house ended up in good hands.”

  “And not Elizabeth Payzen’s?”

  Eleanor fixed Rollins with an icy look. “Whoever said anything about her?”

  “Neely left her everything, didn’t she?” Rollins could sense Marj staring at him hard.

  A shot in the dark, but a hit.

  Eleanor brought her hands from her lap to the tabletop, a gesture that seemed somehow aggressive. “That detestable lawyer of Neely’s, Mr. Eliot, wouldn’t breathe a word about that. Not even to her parents! Oh, he was vile. You should write an article about him.”

  “That’s why you turned to Jerry?”

  “Do I know a Jerry?” The voice was lofty, contemptuous.

  “Your realtor, Jerry Sloane.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Sloane.” A slight smile crept over her features. “He seemed to know things. Yes, he was very…helpful.”

  “Wasn’t that a little risky, Aunt Eleanor?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Her eyebrows raised.

  “I wouldn’t have thought that Jerry Sloane was your type.”

  “Oh, but he came very highly recommended.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, by your mother.” She said this airily, as if discussing trifles. “She seemed to know him quite well.”

  Rollins glanced at Marj, who met his eyes with a startled look of her own.

  Aunt Eleanor gave out a delicate laugh. “You seem so surprised! But your mother—she knows lots of people, you know.”

  “I wonder how you happened to ask her.”

  “We talk occasionally, your mother and I.”

  Rollins replied quickly: “Anything to keep Elizabeth from getting the house, and all her things, is that what you mean?”

  Mrs. Blanchard set down her teacup. “She was our only child.” Rollins braced himself for a furious outburst. Instead, she reached to enclose Rollins’ hand in hers.

  Paper beats rock, Neely always told him. And rock beats scissors.

  “Your family suffered a terrible tragedy of your own when your darling little sister died. I know that. But at least you could put a headstone on her grave.” Mrs. Blanchard dabbed at her eyes again. “Oh this is terrible,” she muttered to herself. “I vowed I would not let this happen.”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Blanchard,” Marj told her.

  Eleanor’s lips quivered. “Neely was under a cloud there for so many years. She took the death of your sister so hard. She blamed herself. It took her years to recover. She had nightmares. She had to take another year off before college. And she spent a long while trying to find herself afterward. I just wish she’d never gone to Londonderry. A mother can tell—this wasn’t her way.”

  “Lesbianism, you mean?” Rollins asked.

  Elea
nor put down her napkin. “I suppose that’s the word for it. I’d always loved her early poems. Not that nonsense about vaginas. Nature was her subject. That second volume…Well, you saw who it was dedicated to.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Neely was trying to free herself when she died. She told me so. I went to see Elizabeth once in Londonderry after the disappearance—perhaps you heard?”

  “No.” Rollins was surprised he hadn’t.

  “I wanted to meet the woman who’d had such a powerful effect on my daughter. I never had met her, you see. I sometimes think that Neely had deliberately kept me away. So I went there, and I knocked on her door and told her who I was, and, to my surprise, she invited me in. We had coffee there on the deck behind the house. You know what she asked me?”

  Rollins shook his head.

  “She asked me about Stephanie. She asked me if Neely really had had a cousin who died in the bathtub. I said, yes, that happened. She said that was good to know. Neely had talked about it, often. It had weighed on her. I knew that, of course. But the thing was, Elizabeth said she could never be sure that it really had happened, or whether it wasn’t cover for something else. That was her word, ‘cover.’ I asked her, ‘Whatever do you mean?’ She said she didn’t know, exactly. She just thought that the dead baby was some sort of emblem.” Eleanor lay down the napkin. Her eyes were red. “I don’t know what I was expecting from her that day. A confession, perhaps, or maybe an explanation. I didn’t get anything like that. When I’d finished my coffee, she walked me back to my car. As I was leaving, she said she was sorry. I said, ‘For what?’ And she said, ‘For everything.’ And then I drove off. And that was the only time I ever saw her.”

  Seventeen

  At the hotel that night, Rollins and Marj cuddled together under a sheet, listening to the AC hum as the shadows from the street below played across the ceiling. The air-conditioning had been Marj’s idea. They’d left their clothes out to be laundered overnight and gone to bed naked. It was wonderful to feel her skin on him—a bare arm, a hip, sometimes a leg thrown over his, but Rollins must have finally drifted off because he woke up to find Marj on top of him. “I thought you were awake,” she whispered as she eased herself down on him, sliding his erection deep inside her. “You’re hard as a rock.”